Tick Tock

from him and whirled around the room. When it passed an open door, the door flew shut. When it passed a closed door, the door flew open. All the windows rose as if flung up by invisible hands, and balmy November air blew into the living room. A clock stopped ticking, unlighted lamps glowed, and the television switched on by itself.
    The sphere of light returned to Scootie, hovered over his head for a moment, and then faded away.
    Now Tommy knew how Del had started the yacht without keys and how she had hot-wired the Ferrari in two seconds flat.
    The black Labrador got off the coffee table and padded to his mistress, putting his head on her lap.
    To Tommy's mother, Del said, “We'd like you and Mr. Phan and Tommy's brothers and their wives, all his nieces and nephews, to come to our party tonight in Las Vegas and celebrate our marriage. We can't fit you all in the LearJet, but Mother has leased a 747, which is standing by at the airport right now, and if you hurry, you can all be there with us tonight. It's time for me to quit my job as a waitress and get on with my real work. Tommy and I are going to lead eventful lives, Mrs. Phan, and we'd like all of you to be a part of that.”
    Tommy couldn't read the wrenching series of emotions that passed across his mother's face.
    Having said her piece, Del stroked Scootie, scratched behind his ears, and murmured appreciatively to him:
    “Oh, him a good fella, him is, my cutie Scootie-wootums.” After a while, Mother Phan got up from her chair. She went to the television and turned it off.
    She went to the Buddhist shrine in the corner, struck a match, and lit three sticks of incense.
    For perhaps two or three minutes, the survivor of Saigon and the South China Sea stood staring at the shrine, inhaling the thin and fragrant smoke.
    Del patted Tommy's hand.
    At last his mother turned away from the shrine, came to the sofa, and stood over him, scowling. “Tuong, you won't be doctor when want you be doctor, won't be baker when want you be baker, write stories about silly whiskey-drunk detective, won't keep old ways, don't even remember how speak language from Land of Seagull and Fox, buy Corvette and like cheeseburgers better than com tay cam, forget your roots, want to be something never can be… all bad, all bad. But you make best marriage any boy ever make in history of world, so I guess that got to count for something.”
     
    By four-thirty that afternoon, Tommy, Del, and Scootie were back in their suite at the Mirage.
    Scootie settled in his bedroom to crunch dog biscuits and watch an old Bogart and Bacall movie on television.
    Tommy and Del consummated.
    Afterward, she didn't bite his head off and devour him alive.
    That evening at the reception, Mr. Sinatra called Mother Phan, “A great old broad,” Mai danced with her father, Ton got tipsy for the first time in his life, Sheila Ingrid Julia Rosalyn Winona Lilith answered to three other names, and Del whispered to Tommy, as they did a fox-trot, “This is reality, tofu man, because reality is what we carry in our hearts, and my heart is full of beauty just for you.”

A Note to the Reader
    Ticktock is a new novel, not a revision of a book originally released under a pen name, as have been some recent titles in my publication schedule—such as Winter Moon and Icebound. But I have asked my publishers to handle this one in the more subdued manner with which the revised pen-name books have been published, as opposed to the greater attention given to other new novels like Intensity and the forthcoming Sole Survivor. To explain why, I will give you a peek into my—admittedly disordered—mind.
    Two and a half years ago, when I finished Dark Rivers of the Heart, one of the most intense and arguably most complex books I had ever done, I was exhausted; more to the point, I was shaken by the darkness of the story. I decided that I needed to tackle a project that was considerably lighter in tone.
    Over the years, I've become known for mixing different genres of fiction with reckless abandon—suspense and terror and mystery and love story and a little science fiction—changing the mix with every novel. In a number of books— Watchers, Lightning, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Mr. Murder, to name a few—I had even blended large measures of humour into the mix, though according to the common wisdom of modern publishing, this is a sure sales squelcher. These became some of my most successful novels, however, and readers responded to them